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LINES FROM LAMARTINE.

no meaner man than Alphonse de Lamartine address his real

or imaginary favourite :

"My dog! the difference between thee and me

Knows only our Creator ;-only He

Can number the degrees in being's scale

Between thy instinctive lamp, ne'er known to fail,

And that less steady light of brighter ray,
The soul which animates thy master's clay;
And He alone can tell by what fond tie,
My look thy life-my death, thy sign to die.
Howe'er this be, the human heart bereaved,
In thy affection owns a boon received,
Nor e'er, fond creature, prostrate on the ground,
Could my foot spurn thee or my accents wound!
No, never, never, my poor humble friend,
Could I by act or word thy love offend!

Too much in thee I reverence that Power
Which formed us both for our appointed hour;
That hand which links, by a fraternal tie,
The meanest of His creatures with the high.
Oh, my poor Fido! when thy speaking face,
Upturned to mine, of words supplies the place;
When, sentry by my bed, the slightest moan
That breaks my troubled sleep disturbs thy own;
When noting in my heavy eye the care

That clouds my brow, thou seek'st its meaning there,
And then, as if to chase that care away,
My pendent hand dost gently gnaw in play;
When, as in some clear mirror, I descry
My joys and griefs reflected in thine eye,—
When tokens such as these thy reason speak
(Reason, which with thy love compared, is weak),

I cannot, will not, deem thee a deceiving

Illusive mockery of human feeling,

A body organized, by fond caress
Warmed into seeming tenderness,-
A mere automaton, on which our love

Plays, as on puppets, when their wires we move.

* Jocelyn,' Episode par A. de Lamartine, tome ii. p. 155.

of a secret.

359

"Another year has nearly told its tale."-MONTGOMERY.

OUR circular path has brought us nearly to our place of starting. Another round of wonders is about to follow, in all the worlds of nature, upon that which has well-nigh run its course. A year ago (it seems but a day!) we were seeking a subject for an opening, and now we have to choose one for a concluding, essay. We look into our appropriated field, and, although for above the fiftieth time, can discern therein

PICTURES OF THE PAST.

359

tracks by us untrodden, numerous objects still undescribed; but now, dear friends and companions of our sunny rambles and our fire-side musings, now that the time draws near for us to part, our heart opens towards you more personally, more tenderly, more confidingly, and, instead of seeking for a novel theme in some insect object or insect habitude not yet portrayed, we feel a yearning to end as we began, with our emblematic personality, the individual Acheta domestica, even with a concluding episode drawn from the annals of our childhood, a quiet chrysalidan period, yet active in development of all that constitutes our winged imago, our present self. Memory! painter of the past! let us invoke thee! Ah! but thou art too busy: we want but a single subject, and now, with a few touches of thy magic pencil, thou hast brought before us pictures enough of persons and of scenes to furnish an entire gallery, pictures self-arranged, of which the clearest and the warmest-tinted are those most distant.

First, there is a landscape, half rural, half marine, of a village near the Kentish coast, an old-fashioned quiet little village, with its heavy-headed chimneys appearing here and there amidst embowering elm-trees; more distant, the square spireless tower of the ancient church; and behind all, caught at intervals, the line of ocean, defined and dark, or mingled almost with the blue horizon.

Towards the centre of this wood-cradled nest, as a parent bird amidst her surrounding brood, and bearing towards the encir

360

PICTURES OF THE PAST.

cling group of cottages about the same relative proportion, as well as something of the same relationship, there stands, in the foreground of our picture, an old quaint-looking residence, itself a cottage, but distinguished from the lesser and lowlier of the assemblage by its magnitude, its flight of steps ascending from the pathway to the garden gate, its surrounding shrubbery and flanking fir-trees, its trellised porch and arched doorway, its casemented bay-windows, and its clustered chimneys, from whence (our landscape is a winter one) the smoke is ascending through the frosty air in sturdy upright columns, that tell, indisputably, of comfort and of cookery within. Three other pictures (family and domestic portraits) we must take down, next, from our memory-furnished gallery. All are of dwellers in the cottage just described, the principal residence, and eke the vicarage, of the village of H.

First, we have its reverend master, of build substantial and air unpretending as his abode, of middle age, middle stature, and mediocre features, a man altogether made up of middlings, except that he seems invested with a portion more than middling of indolent good humour. Most easy vicar! dearly did we love thee; but only in proportion to thy claims upon our young affections. Thou wert our kind uncle, and, much more, scarcely less a father unto us than to thine own only little daughter Lucy; and thou wert, moreover, our tutor, our earliest instructor in much of varied knowledge,-truly more varied than profound. Thyself an entomologist (albeit of no